After the 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and to the present day, Afghan weavers have incorporated imagery of modern weapons into their Oriental rugs.To the left are details from some of the rugs, from top left to bottom right, crouching infantry, a bomber, a retreating tank and a missile.
A wealth of information about rugs of this style, thir history, a blog, numerous images, as well as war rugs for sale, can be viewed at the site: warrug.com (which is where I got the pictured details from).
Both Soviet and present day Coalition forces are represented. There are also "War on Terrorism" rugs, which, according to Sergeant Major Herbert A. Friedman a psyops specialist, appear to draw heavily from propaganda leaflets distributed to the Afghans. The side by side comparisons of the leaflets to the rugs are convincing (sorry, I had to link inside a frame to get to that page so the site-wide navigation is broke on that link).
It is a fascinating and informative site. I'm sure many of the rugs are just cranked out for the troops in country, and Lord only knows the politics of whoever is weaving them, but the rugs do have a beauty about them.
1 comment:
I really admire this, I mean it really looks interesting! I'm actually glad to see all this stuff, to see that this world offers creativity and ideas other than what my lonesome small town provides. This world is quite the big place and to encounter a story such as this one just puts me out of my ordinary. I gotta hand it to whoever wrote this, you've really kept me updated! Now, let's just hope that I can come across another blog just as interesting :)
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